Survivors Recount Horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings are known in Japan as hibakusha. There are about 48,000 of them living in Nagasaki Prefecture, and about 83,000 in Hiroshima. Some were small children when the bombs were dropped, others were young adults. Their average age now is over 80. Several of the survivors shared their stories and thoughts about President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima on Friday.

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Sunao Tsuboi, co-chairperson of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations and a survivor the the Hiroshima atom bomb, in Hiroshima, Japan, on Wednesday.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times

SUNAO TSUBOI, 91, Hiroshima

Mr. Tsuboi was a 20-year-old university student on his way to classes on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, when the atomic bomb fell. His body was burned from head to toe.

The pain was so severe that Mr. Tsuboi was certain he would die. He took a small rock and etched on a bridge, “Here is where Sunao Tsuboi found his end.”

A classmate rescued him from the bridge and carried him to a military hospital. Several days later, his mother and uncle found him and took him home. It took him a year to walk again.

Later, he fell in love with a woman whose parents did not want her to marry him, fearing that he would soon die. In despair, the couple took sleeping pills, but the doses were too low. Mr. Tsuboi eventually won her parents’ permission, and seven years later they were married. The couple had three children and seven grandchildren.

Mr. Tsuboi said he was grateful for Mr. Obama’s visit. He said that although the president had made little progress toward the vision of a nuclear-free world that he outlined in 2009, “that’s the stupidity of humanity.”

He urged the president to work for world peace after he leaves office. “The world is more complex now,” Mr. Tsuboi said. “But in his heart, he wants people to get along well with each other.”

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Shigemitsu Tanaka, director of the A-Bomb Survivor’s Council and an atomic bomb survivor, at his home in Nagasaki, Japan, on Monday.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times

SHIGEMITSU TANAKA, 75, Nagasaki

Mr. Tanaka, almost 5 years old when the bomb fell, was playing under a persimmon tree on Aug. 9, 1945, when he heard a huge thunderclap and the sky went completely white. All the windows in his family’s home were blown out.

His mother went to work at a local elementary school where survivors were taken for medical treatment. There, Mr. Tanaka heard moans and smelled the stench of burning flesh.

Mr. Tanaka’s parents suffered from repeated illnesses throughout their lives. His father died from liver cancer 12 years after the bombing.

“Of course we have a feeling of wanting an apology,” said Mr. Tanaka, the director of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivor’s Council. “But the most important thing is to abolish nuclear weapons.”

He said he hoped Mr. Obama would sit down and listen to the aging survivors. “If he does not listen to them now, in 10 years, he can never listen to them,” Mr. Tanaka said.

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Miyako Jodai, 76, was 6 when the atomic bomb destroyed her home in Nagasaki. She spent days huddling with other survivors in a cave.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times

MIYAKO JODAI, 76, Nagasaki

Ms. Jodai was living with her grandmother and aunt in the hills of Nagasaki. All she remembers of the moment the bomb exploded is an electric charge of light that knocked her unconscious.

With their home destroyed and no food to be found, the family escaped to Fukuoka, about 100 miles to the northeast. They arrived at the home of a distant relative, who offered Ms. Jodai her first warm bath since the bombing. “She was so kind,” Ms. Jodai said. “She said, ‘You have done well to survive.’”

Over the thousands of times she has told her story, she has been very frank about her belief that Japan must shoulder some of the blame for the bombings. “I think there were a lot of chances to prevent the situation where the A-bomb was dropped on Japan,” she said. “If we had stopped our aggression, maybe it could have saved Japan from being a victim of a bomb.”

Ms. Jodai said she welcomed Mr. Obama’s visit, although she wants him to listen to stories of the hibakusha so he can “understand the cruelty and misery and the human impact of the A-bomb.”

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Yoshitoshi Fukahori, an atomic bomb survivor and the chairperson of the Research Committee for Photographic Records of Nagasaki Atomic Bombing at the Nagasaki Foundation for the Promotion of Peace, at his home in Nagasaki, Japan, on Monday.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times

YOSHITOSHI FUKAHORI, 87, Nagasaki

Mr. Fukahori was 16 and had been conscripted to work in a government office. When the bomb dropped, he dove under a desk. “It was such a loud sound and like lightning, so bright,” he said. “All the air came out of the room.”

The night of Aug. 9 he tried to get home, but the main road through the center of town was on fire. On an alternate route through the mountains, he encountered other victims trying to escape, their clothes in tatters and their heads covered in black ash. A woman clung to his leg, begging for water. When Mr. Fukahori reached down to grab her arm, her skin came off in strips.

Mr. Fukahori said he understood why Mr. Obama would not be issuing an apology for the bombings.

“In the U.S. there are various opinions about whether he should apologize or not,” Mr. Fukahori said. “I understand that well, because the U.S. lost so many lives in World War II. We are all victims of war.”

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Kana Miyoshi, 22, holding a photo of her grandmother Yoshie Miyoshi, 78, who survived the Hiroshima atom bomb.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times

KANA MIYOSHI, 22, Hiroshima

Ms. Miyoshi is a senior at Hiroshima City University. She is the granddaughter of Yoshie Miyoshi, a survivor who lost her father and one of her brothers in the bombing.

As she was growing up, Ms. Miyoshi never asked her grandmother to tell her story. But in college, she was invited to a workshop in gathering testimony in the Marshall Islands, the site of numerous nuclear tests after World War II. She has since recorded her grandmother’s story on video and wants more people to hear the memories.

Growing up in Hiroshima, Ms. Miyoshi said she was taught to regard nuclear weapons as “unconditionally evil” and she said she never knew about Japan’s aggression in the war.

But as a political science major who also spent her junior semester at the University of Hawaii, she has started to consider other views. “I found out that in other countries there is the opinion that nuclear weapons can act as deterrence,” she said.

As for Japan’s role, she said, “we should not talk only from the victims’ side. We also can be the offenders.”

Ms. Miyoshi, who recalled writing a letter to President Obama in 2009 asking him to come to Hiroshima, said she was grateful for his visit. She said neither she nor her grandmother expected an apology. “It’s only a formality,” she said. “It’s meaningless to talk about formalities.”

Correction:May 27, 2016

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of Fukuoka, Japan, relative to Nagasaki. It is about 100 miles northeast of Nagasaki, not southwest.

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